ALAN TURING: PATTERNS & PORTRAITS (2023 - )

This body of work emerged from conversations and research developed in collaboration with Professor Andrew Krause (Applied Mathematics) at Durham University (BioSciences Institute) centred on Alan M Turing’s 1952 breakthrough paper, “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis.”

One of Turing’s life long obsessions was related to how mathematics is inherent and underpins the development of natural forms. From an early age Turing was fascinated by the Fibonacci sequence, and during his war time years at Bletchley, he discussed with Joan Clarke and others how mathematics could help understand the way natural patterns were formed.

During the late 1940’s and early 1950’s Turing worked on first generation software programs that could provide insight into how the black and white markings on Friesian cows could be understood from mathematical principles. The same concept could be used for other patterns generated in the natural world, zebra fish, hydra, plant formations. The work Turing completed was not easily understood by scientists and mathematicians at the time, as there was little cross disciplinary expertise, as for example many biologists were not able to understand the mathematics of Turing’s hypothesis, and mathematicians found it difficult to understand the biology.

Since the 1950’s new branches of scientific discipline have been formed, one of them being Mathematical Biology.

Andrew Krause and a group of peers decided to create an open source application (www.visualpde.com) that can help non-mathematicians better understand Turing’s and other scientists work by visually modelling the formula.

THE ARTWORK

This body of work references a redacted version of the text of Turing’s paper, “ The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis”, the small photograph of Turing in the National Portrait Gallery in London, and various visual images captured from the visualpde.com app alongside drawn and manipulated images that relate to Turing’s life and work. The textual elements in the work are a poetic surrealist decoding of the scientific paper that may reveal and conceal aspects of Turing’s life.

The work consists of around fifty images and different image versions, which may be purchased individually or as a de-luxe boxed set.